Can you photoshop a picture for a better result for a portrait tattoo?

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to photoshop a picture for a portrait tattoo??? My friend wants to get a portrait of her son and extremely likes a certain picture. She took it to a tattoo artist and he said there wasn't enough shadowing for it to come out good so now she was wondering if theres a way to modify that with photoshop?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

not enough shadowing? what?! you need to get a second opinion. a good artist would be able to do it. a portrait doesnt need 'shadowing'!

Answer 2

Of course there is a way to modify any image with Photoshop.

She might want to try using one of the filters to give it a "drawing" look, because that is what a tattoo requires.

I would suggest trying Filter > Artistic > Posterize or Filter > Stylize > Find Edges as a starting point. Of course there is playing with the settings of each individual filter, and duplicating and changing layer blending modes to achieve the result you want.

This will be no easy task if there isn't much shadowing in the image (such as an over exposed picture or a picture with a lot of bright areas). Plus there is no magical button to do that, it takes trial and error until you are happy with the results, that is why people pay a lot of money for Photoshop classes. Your friend might want to take the picture to a graphic designer and see what response she gets.

The Tattoo artist is worried about his own work time, it would probably take a lot of time to get the picture to a level that could be worked with as a tattoo and since they are very busy during the summer that could have been why he said that.

Answer 3

I agree with the first answer. Any good portrait tattoo artist would be able to improvise and add the shadowing in there to make it look better. Don't just go to any tattoo artist to get a portrait done because they are a lot harder to do than a simple tattoo and you really need someone that has done plenty of them. Most tattoo artists specialize in a certain area and you really want to shop around to find one that specializes in portraits. You shouldn't have to use Photoshop to make a picture more tattoo-able...